Barney Pell, Microsoft’s Chief Architect for Local Search, has left the company for a new gig in the venture capital world. “Yesterday was my last day at Microsoft,” Pell said in a tweet earlier this week. “I’m now back to full-time angel investor and parallel entrepreneur!”

Notably, all three defections occured in the last month. What’s going on? That’s tough to say, though ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley has an interesting theory: Windows Division boss Steve Sinofsky’s growing influence on Microsoft’s management processes, and a culture that is beginning to favor specialists over generalists.

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